So there has been so much attention lately on eco-minded approaches in businesses (a fantastic development!), we thought we would communicate with you folks about all of the steps we try to take to help us be greener and more environmentally friendly.

1. For five long years now, we’ve been offering a 20c discount on KeepCups when they are used by our customers for take away coffees. When we first started this, we got many of our regulars converted to using KeepCups. However, we’ve noticed in the past year in particular that there has been a very, very substantial growth in KeepCup usage – which we are really delighted about. We are also delighted to see many other cafes finally embrace this positive policy also!

Furthermore, we treat customers to their first coffee for free when they buy one of our Keepcups!

2. We’ve also banned the use of plastic straws in the café – again, this is something that we are seeing more and more businesses address recently.

3. Since day one, the vast majority of our take away items (disposables) have been compostable - or where they aren’t, recyclable/made of recycled materials, with just one or two exceptions (which we are looking to address as soon as possible). This includes all of our “disposable” coffee cups and lids, soup pots, salad boxes, our wooden knives and forks, our cornstarch spoons, etc.

4. Furthermore, we feel it is not enough to simply use compostable/recyclable items – to the extent possible, needless consumption should be avoided. People tend to forget that even if something is compostable/recyclable, it still takes incredible amounts of energy (often from carbon-producing sources) as well as carbon-producing transportation, to produce and distribute (and dispose of, even if done so sensibly) these single-use items.

5. For the above reason, each and every customer for take away is always asked by us if they need cutlery or if they need a bag – we are happy to provide them if they are necessary, but we encourage people to avoid using them wherever possible. Most people are returning to their offices that are well-stocked with plates, spoons, cutlery, etc.

6. When someone can easily carry something in their hands (rather than using a bag), we encourage it also in order to avoid using a bag. Too often, people automatically grab cutlery, napkins or a bag when they can be absolutely unnecessary.

7. In addition to the above measures, we ensure that all of our own organic waste is sent for composting.

8. Furthermore, the packaging that our produce/deliveries we receive are returned to our suppliers for recycling. We are encouraging our suppliers to use less and less delivery packaging wherever they can.

9. We only sell our own filtered still and sparkling water for sit-in customers to avoid unnecessary use of bottles (be they glass or plastic).

10. We also have switched to serving only draft beer (Irish craft beer from Eight Degrees Brewery) to avoid the unnecessary use of glass bottles – again, think of the energy that goes in to production, transportation, recycling of all that glass!

11. We even have our own greenhouse on our roof where we use some of our coffee grinds. This is where we are beginning to a small selection of our own herbs (and some vegetables) for use in some of our dishes.

12. We aim to keep our menu seasonal in order to help us in ensure that we are reducing our environmental impact.

As proud as we are of all of the above steps, there is still a long road ahead and we need to be relentless in taking steps (some big, some small) in the right direction. And we all need to do it together – we as a business, but also by encouraging the right kind of behaviour with our customers.

On that basis, we are delighted to announce our newest incentive for the right kind of behaviour!

As mentioned above, most of our take away items are compostable. However, people tend to forget that for the right outcome to be achieved, those materials actually need to end up in a compost bin!

It seems to be a very common misconception that they can simply be put in “the recycling”. However, they absolutely do need to be treated differently and correctly handled, in order to achieve the right outcome!

So, to help people on the right path, we will now happily accept back any of our compostable items that are returned to us and ensure they are disposed of correctly (ending up ultimately as plant-and-earth-nourishing compost!). To incentivise this, we are trialling a scheme whereby we will give people a 15c discount off a purchase for take away when they are returning compostable items, starting from Monday 23rd July in both cafes.

We will always work hard to make improvements and differences in what we do – it’s better for us, better for you and better for our world. This will be an on-going journey, made sometimes of giant leaps but, more often, important little steps that count for so much. Thanks for your support and we’d be delighted if you can spread the word and encourage the right kinds of behaviour in your own workplaces, other businesses you give your custom to, and your colleagues, family, friends and neighbours.

P.S.

We’ve come across this wonderful website: https://recyclinglistireland.ie/ which has lots and lots of really useful information to help clarify the dos/don’ts of recycling/composting.

It has been far too long since we’ve updated our blog. And it’s not because we haven’t had news. Quite the opposite in fact! We’ve been so busy bedding in the new space and working on lots of different projects that we’ve neglected to tell you lovely folk all what’s been happening.

So, just in case you think we’ve been resting on our laurels (rather than growing them – more on that in a moment), here’s an idea of what’s been going on….

· We’ve worked hard to get our new space up and running. Literally everything about our business on Capel Street changed overnight so it has been a big, big transition for us. But it’s been a huge amount of fun also, though with some challenges.

· We’ve been busy with our large greenhouse on the roof which has allowed us to grow lots and lots of beautiful plants. This has allowed us to launch our outdoor seating area – the terrace alongside the Luas tracks. So we’ve now lots of outdoorsy seating. The brief was to ensure the space felt very vibrant and green. So Peter and James have been working their green fingers rather hard – we have bamboo, olive trees, nasturtiums, thyme, sage, parsley, potatoes, sweet geranium (all the way from Ballymaloe) and bay trees (a.k.a Laurel) all out and thriving at the moment. Soon we will be adding sunflowers, tomatoes, coffee plants and lots more!

· We’ve done the same for indoors – Peter and James have been working with Pat from www.plantstore.ie to bring a lot of green and vibrancy to the indoor space. The brief for the entire new dining area is that it should feel nourishing and fresh. And aside from being served healthy, nutritious food by us, we wanted there to be lots and lots of greenery to help refresh the soul also.

· With the new space, we’ve got a much bigger kitchen. One of the things we’ve always wanted to do was make our own bread. Catherine, Shauna and Alice (our amazing bakers) are now making pretty much all of our own bread – from our lovely Middle Eastern Flatbreads for many of our dishes to our homemade Georgian bread that we use for our sandwiches and our potato & kale Fadge which we use for our new “Full Hubbard” brunch dish.

· Jonathan, Ivan and the whole gang in the kitchen have been working hard in order to ensure that our menus for breakfast, brunch and lunch constantly evolve. One of the biggest changes they’ve brought in is to look to a different culture each week for inspiration for our lunch specials. This has been a huge amount of fun and has had a phenomenal reaction from our lovely customers. We’ve travelled without moving all across the world – from Mexico to Morocco, from India to Italy, from Thailand to Turkey. This week we are looking towards Vietnam. And we are very excited to do a very Irish menu soon aswell and celebrate our own wonderful food culture!

· The dinner team of chefs (Dave, Gabor and Antonio) have been ensuring the dinner menu evolves in line with the seasons, constantly experimenting with new ingredients, concepts and techniques. Our Middle East Feast menu continues to be 50% vegan and full of vibrancy, fragrance and flavour. We’ve introduced a weekly special on our dinner menu. Our service team, lead by Andy, have been busy preparing a new wine list and launching our craft beer menu (where we’ve partnered with Eight Degrees Irish Craft Beer)

· As part of the dinner menu, Catherine and Shauna launched our “Chocolate Mousse Experience” recently – a delightful light-yet-rich chocolate mousse is served at your table and we build it in front of you, with a selection of sauces and toppings brought to you to choose from. It’s getting a great reaction and is a huge amount of fun – for our customers but also our team!

· Peter, Cris, Tim and the rest of the barista team have been working hard to find the best and most interesting coffees for you to enjoy, brewing them with focus and care. We have been working with Gardelli recently as a guest roaster (which won the World Coffee Roaster Award for 2018) and this has been very exciting. Soon, we will begin working with a new roaster who will be dedicated to roasting exclusively for Brother Hubbard (more on that in a few weeks!)

· Our service team, lead by Dani, Spiros, Nerissa & Kirstie continue to be dedicated to bringing care, attention and a big welcome to everyone who comes through our doors. We’ve realised that we are getting more and more visitors to Dublin (as well as more and more locals) so we see it as being hugely important to be strong, positive ambassadors for Irish hospitality and the Irish welcome!

· Tita and Danielle have been busier than ever organising special events and catering with our chefs - with our new space, we are delighted to be able to host all sorts of events - from small team meetings to large launches (we hosted the launches of the Dublin Film Festival and the Dublin Dance Festival recently). We’ve also been able to cater for all sorts of events off site - from special health-focussed team breakfasts to customised menus for special events (we were thrilled to work with Bulmer’s recently to prepare a cider-themed menu for the launch of the Forbidden Fruit Festival!)

While that’s all been happening on Capel St, Brother Hubbard South on Harrington St has been equally busy! The team have brought a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm to what we do there. Paul and Rachel are leading our superb service and barista teams – to evolve all of what we do and to listen to our wonderful customers. Jake and his team in the kitchen bring the same level of creativity and passion to their menu as the folks do on the northside. We are making our own bread there also (despite it being a much smaller kitchen) and the menu changes weekly to reflect the seasons as well as the creative input of the team there.

Believe it or not, there’s much more to tell you! And we’ve TWO very, very exciting projects that we are going to be launching over the summer. One will involve a different but complementary offering to Brother Hubbard. The other is focussed on us launching a form of social enterprise which we hope will both shine a light on, and assist in some small way in solving, two big, big problems which exist in society at the moment. But you will have to wait just a little bit longer for the details of those!

Thanks for tuning in – sorry it has been so long since we’ve updated you on all that has been happening. Whilst we are never perfect, we are always trying hard to move in a positive direction – for our customers and our team – and thank you one and all for your continued support in that regard!

We will be back soon with more news – we promise. In the meantime, enjoy the summer – and pop by and say hi!

We are relaunching our Supper Clubs. From February, we are aiming for there to be one a month, each with a different theme that steps beyond our normal menu. It allows us to try something new, something especially created as a feast and hopefully we can all have a lot of fun together! We hosted several supperclubs last year and they were always so much fun and a sell-out!

We are thrilled to be launching the 2018 Supperclubs in our new space – where we will have a lot more seating for everyone!

Our first one of the year will take place on 27th February at 7pm. As it has been such a hugely popular theme for us previously, we are going to present a Vegan Feast for everyone to enjoy (regardless of you usual dietary habits!). As many of you know, this time last year we made our dinner menu over 50% vegan permanently and this has been an enormous success, with vegans and meat-eaters alike.

Our menu for this Vegan Feast will be anchored in what is seasonally available, with everything made from scratch as always by us – a menu full of creativity, flavour, colour, texture and purity!

As always, we will be seating people at long tables so it will be a wonderfully convivial evening!

The Details:

Event: A Very Vegan Feast – a 5-course vegan menu with a special welcome drink

Location: Brother Hubbard North, Capel Street

Date/Time: Tuesday 27th February from 6.30 (dinner at starts at 7 sharp)

Well, another year is almost done! Can you believe it!? Time flies when you are having fun – and given how brief this past year has felt, I guess that means that we had a lot of fun!

It has been by far the most interesting year we’ve had since perhaps the first year we’ve opened (but we are delighted to say that every year has been pretty interesting!). We are so proud of all that we’ve achieved – for our customers, for our team and for ourselves. Brother Hubbard North has undergone a very substantial change with the addition of the new space.

With that came new challenges and new adventures – our menu is bigger than ever, with a wider variety of food to provide interest and excitement to more and more customers.

We expanded our evening offering to include a whole new additional menu of flatbreads, alongside our Middle East Feast. And we also managed to add beer and spirits to our list of drinks to offer you.

We had a lot of fun developing our menu to make it even more sustainable, more vegan and more creative! And we had so much fun with our monthly supper clubs (which will be returning in 2018 - stay tuned!). And with our new space, we’ve been able to cater more easily for larger groups, for families and for private events.

Changes in Brother Hubbard South have perhaps been a little less dramatic but the menu continues to grow and evolve and we just love the neighbourhood feeling over that side of the city!

Absolutely all of what we did last year was achieved through the on-going support of our amazing team and our wonderful customers. We’ve come to realise that we aren’t just a business – whilst that should perhaps not be a massive revelation (we see that any business is built on the foundations of its team and the support of its customers), it just feels so much so the case for Brother Hubbard. So we are delighted and proud to have an even greater community of people supporting us and helping us improve and grow: our team, our customers, our suppliers, our neighbours.

Next year will bring lots more exciting adventures! Perhaps one of the more exciting ones is our plan – very high level currently – to launch a new initiative to help give more back to our community, to Dublin and to our environment, through a social enterprise-style model. So stay tuned for more details about that – and so much more that we’ve in store for 2018.

We are wishing each of you – our team, our customers, our suppliers, our neighbours – the very best for a wonderful festive season, with peace and happiness for 2018 and, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your love and support this past year.

So folks, “that” time of year is nearly upon us! Our team of elves here at Brother Hubbard have been busying themselves for quite some time now getting ready to help make your gift shopping easier again this year.

We’ve lots on offer for you from which to choose. You can buy a whole selection of our products from our shelves in either Brother Hubbard North or Brother Hubbard South. Choose from our cookbook, our homemade preserves, our special ingredients, our teas and our coffees and so much more! Or go for one of our gift selection offerings - we’ve special gift packs and hampers to suit all sorts of budgets.

And we’ve even more of our special homemade hot chocolate packs for you this year - it was our number one seller last year (along with our cookbook), particular idea for your office Kris Kindle.

And, finally, you can also buy a voucher online (which can be printed off or emailed) which is valid for either location for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or retail!

See our brochure below for all of our gift options.

So pop in and have a browse. We can also take hamper orders via email (tita@brotherhubbard.ie) or on the phone (01 - 44 11 112).

Hi folks! We are delighted to have had such a great reaction to our Christmas Lunch and Dinner Party offering this year (see here). We’ve also had a lot of requests for people wanting something a little bit different. With that in mind, we’ve put together a Christmas Breakfasty-Brunch Party menu which will be available Monday-Friday mornings in December. For groups of 10 or more, we can also over a separate private dining area!

Please take a look at our offering below and if you would like any further details, or to make a reservation, please contact Tita at reservations@brotherhubbard.ie or on 01 44 11 112.

Announcing the launch of our new evening menu, available from the delightfully early start of 5pm Tuesday to Saturday! To celebrate, we’ve teamed up with the good folks at the Gate Theatre to give away two tickets for their incredible new play “Tribes” plus dinner for two, chez nous.

Clever, beautiful and sharply funny, TRIBES is the second production in THE OUTSIDER, Selina Cartmell’s inaugural season as Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre.

Following the success of The Great Gatsby, the seats are back in the theatre for TRIBES, but the youthful energy of that show is still very much in evidence. Directed by Oonagh Murphy, one of Ireland’s brightest directing talents, with a stellar cast including Nick Dunning and Fiona Bell alongside actors performing on the Gate stage for the first time; Claire Dunne, Gavin Drea, Alex Nowak and Grainne Keenan, this This award-winning play is proving to be a huge hit with audiences.

Sunday Times *****

Sunday Business Post *****

Sunday Independent *****

Irish Times ****

The Examiner ****

Irish Mail on Sunday ****

Tribes is that rarest of beasts, a play driven by sophisticated ideas that also hits home on a gut emotional level.Sunday Business Post

A commanding and absorbing production.The Irish Times

Nina Raine's 2010 play shines like a beacon of first-rate writing for the stage. This is a brilliant and funny play getting a fine-tuned outing, perfect for an audience seeking a theatrical mirror for the here and now. Not to be missed. - Irish Independent.

A play of craft, intelligence and wit. The Examiner

Hilarious and heartbreaking… Tribes is unmissable. 2Paragraphs

To be in with a chance to win a pair of tickets, plus pre-show dinner for two at Brother Hubbard North and a bottle of wine on Thursday 9th November, just tweet or post on Instagram/Facebook with the hashtag #DinnerAtBroHub

We just thought we would update you all on our new addition to the family! Recently we opened the doors to our new premises on Capel St right beside the original Brother Hubbard.

Now, first of all, a lot of you were worried we were saying goodbye to original space! We say, not in a million years (or at least until our lease is up in a few decades time!). We will always cherish the space – and we’ve actually improved it! Given all the extra room we now have next door, we’ve been able to reduce the amount of seating in the original venue so it feels a little more spacious whilst also retaining its cosiness. What’s more is that we’ve replaced our famous/infamous stools with nice high-backed chairs – we know some of you really wanted this.

The new space has allowed for a much more streamlined service for take-away from Little Brother. And we’ve now got lots of seating, having almost doubled our seating capacity with the new space. We can more easily accommodate groups, families (we’ve got more high chairs AND baby-changing facilities). We’ve also got a new outdoor seating area which has a lot of vegetation growing there (the rule is it must all be edible!) – again, we’ve made this a non-smoking area in the best interests of all of our customers.

The new premises has also given us a much bigger kitchen, which means we’ve a lot more space to produce some of the dishes we’ve been aching to do for a long, long time now. We are making a lot more of our own bread, we’ve expanded our cake range and we’ve added to our brunch and lunch menus. New favourites include our savoury merguez sausage rolls for take away, our new butter bean & ham hock bowl, our new pancakes and bircher mueslis. We’ve also revisited some of our old classics and brought back an old favourite: our Moroccan Zalouk.

And if all that wasn’t enough, we’ve added a whole new middle-eastern styled flatbread menu to sit alongside our existing Middle East Feast menu. And now there’s beer available too along with our short-but-focussed wine list!

We’re incredibly proud of our team and all their hard work getting us over the line. And the encouragement and support from our lovely customers has really meant so much to us. It has been a huge adjustment for us and there have been a few teething issues, as there always will be. But we’ve worked hard and we will always do our best for our customers and our team.